Spy Training: Accents & Oranges
by Mashup
Summary: Michael is trying to teach Fiona some new accents but why is Fiona chopping orange in his loft?


A/N: This story is inspired by the fact that Jeffrey Donovan (the actor who plays Michael Westen) can apparently mimic any English accent known to man. And a warning: this story does contain intentional spelling errors to highlight the pronunciation in Michael's accent.

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"Michael, when you said that we were going to be training, I thought it would be a little more physical than this." Fiona Glenanne complained about the lack of a physical confrontation at their default training facility. Where else? The loft of course.

"This is eh form ov trehning. You are exsorcising your mouth ehnd your tongue," Michael replied with a thick Russian accent.

"I don't need to practice Russian English. I already have an Irish accent, a British accent and an American accent. That's three different covers I could be using. I don't really need more than that." Fiona took the liberty of attacking on orange with a giant butcher's knife at the bench where they normally brainstormed approaches to the jobs that came in.

"You cehn nevor have too many covors. Or accyents." Michael disagreed.

"Why do you do those accents anyway? It's not like they're going to care if you're from New York or wherever as long as you're able to do whatever you promise to do - like boosting cars and carrying weapons."

"Ah but you see, it's not just about boosting cars and carrying weapons now is it?" Michael replied in his normal accent. "It's about giving your skills a believable context."

"I deal in weapons and explosives. Do you think my suppliers could care less if I conducted the transaction in Irish English or in American English?" Fiona asked as she lined up more oranges for her butcher's knife.

"Fi, your suppliers know who you are. The whole point of undercover work is that it's a cover. I have to be as far from my normal self as possible to protect my real identity." said Michael. "Otherwise it would be too easy for the bad guys to guess who I am and for them to hurt you or my mom."

Fiona responded by attacking her orange more viciously. "Hurt me? Please. I'd like to see them dodge this weapon."

Seeing Fiona brandish a butcher's knife stained with orange juice in the middle of the loft should have been a hilarious sight but Michael could not laugh when his girlfriend would not take her own safety seriously.

"What are you worried about Michael?" Fiona looked up from her citrus massacre. "I was in the IRA. It's not like I haven't been around danger before."

"Fi, we're just two people. Do we really need ten oranges between the two of us?" Michael asked quietly.

As is usually the case between the two of them, whenever Fiona tries to bait him into expressing his true feelings for her, Michael swiftly changes the subject.

"This is for the huge tub of plain yoghurt you have at the bottom of your fridge," Fiona replied.

"Orange flavoured yoghurt? Are you serious?" Michael raised an eyebrow.

"What? It's not like citrus flavoured yogurt doesn't exist," Fiona replied.

"Have you considered that maybe I got plain flavouring for a reason?" Michael asked, bemused.

"Don't tell me you've got diet restrictions now," said Fiona.

Michael smiled but didn't immediately respond.

"Alright, you're either detoxing for whatever reason or you can't eat anything strong. Which one is it?" Fiona demanded.

Michael considered telling her that he was undergoing a new age detox program but he knew that she probably wouldn't believe him. He hadn't really intended for Fiona to find out in this way.

"Well, you recall that my last cover required that I get bashed in the abdomen. Like a lot. So er... I won't really be able to eat anything solid for a couple of days." Michael admitted.

"Michael Westen," Fiona exclaimed. "You've been on a liquid diet and you didn't think to inform your friends?"

"Fi, I've been hurt in the field more times than I can count." Michael replied with honesty. "If I told you about every time that I was injured, you'd think that I was a hypochondriac like my mother."

"When was the last time you checked into a real hospital?" Fiona glared at him.

"My field medicine isn't real enough for you?" Michael replied with mock offence.

Even though the number of times that Michael had saved the lives of his friends with his "field medicine" was uncountable, Fiona was still furious with Michael for never seeing a real doctor.

"One of these days, you're going to get yourself seriously injured and then you're gonna be stubborn about it like you usually are and you're going to refuse treatment and it's going to knock you out cold." Fiona put her knife doen and glared at him. "You're not Clark Kent. You're not invincible."

"Superman's not invincible either. All you need is a little green rock and you can bring him to his knees." Michael replied.

"I'll give you a little green rock." Fiona declared as she leaned in to punch him in the face which he quickly avoided by ducking out of the way.

Michael disappeared behind the bench and took his time before resurfacing.

"Good to see that you're still human," said Fiona without sympathy.

It was obvious that the sudden movement had aggravated his injury and caused him more pain than he liked to admit.

"Let's just get back to the training okay?" Michael deflected.

"Michael, you speak Russian. You don't need to practice speaking English with a Russian accent, you can just speak the native language." Fiona shook her head.

"But what if my target isn't Russian? Sometimes I need to convince people that I'm from another place. Those people won't know the language of the place I'm supposed to come from." Michael countered.

"Yeah but there are still limits to what you can sound like. I mean you can't exactly pass for Chinese." Fiona reminded him.

"Actoolly zere are a lot of Russian expats in China. And anyway, if zuh communication is over zuh phone, it won't matter what I look like." Michael replied with a nonspecific East Asian accent.

"Your Chinese accent needs a bit more work." Fiona critiqued.

"That's why I'm trying to work on it," Michael replied with his regular accent. "Now are you going to help me or not?"

"What are we going to do with all these oranges?" Fiona enquired, gesturing to the citrus massacre on the bench top between them.

"I want you to make the orange yoghurt that you were going to and give it to my mom. She'll like it." Michael instructed.

"Let me guess, you want her to believe that you made it." Fiona glared at him.

"Well… I haven't really cooked anything for her in a long time and…" Michael stammered.

"You're going to owe me for this one." Fiona replied as she split the next orange with a swift downward stroke of her butcher's knife.

The loud chop echoed through the loft. Michael knew enough not to say anything in any accent in response.

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A/N: Originally, this was just supposed to be a harmless fluff story with crazy accents but somehow I managed to insert seriousness into it after all. I'm still trying to work on writing humour (which is always harder than writing straight drama).

Special thanks to Julieta, a reviewer from one of my other stories for her stream of fic prompts. I didn't use all of them but some of what she was saying did find their way into this story.


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